PropTech and Real Estate Innovations

Book excerpt: This textbook serves as a guide to real estate students and educators on the various property innovations and digital technologies that continue to shape the property industry. The advancement of PropTech in the last few decades has led to significant changes in real estate systems, operations, and practice, and this new textbook provides insight on the past, present, and future of PropTech innovations that have spread across the value chain of real estate through planning, development, management, finance, investment, operations, and transactions. The textbook approaches this subject from the real estate components, asset classes, and submarkets and links them to the associated innovations and digital technologies. It concludes by reviewing the role of education, innovation, skill development, and professionalism as major elements of the future of real estate operations and practice. This book’s unique contributions are in putting the “property” element at the forefront and then illustrating how technology can enhance the various areas of real estate; the focus on how the different innovations and technologies can enhance the economic, environmental, social, and physical efficiency of real estate; and its coverage of some non‐technological innovations like flexible working and more practical areas of real estate innovation such as skills, employability, creativity, and education. It contains 21 case studies and 29 case summaries, which can serve as practice exercises for students. This book will be useful to students in helping them build a knowledge base and understanding of innovation and digital technologies in the industry. Real estate educators can use the textbook as a guide to incorporate real estate innovation and digital technologies into their current teaching and also to develop their real estate curricula through PropTech‐related modules and courses where necessary. It will also be valuable to real estate researchers in search of the theoretical and conceptual linkages, as well as industry practitioners who seek insight into the current and future potential of digital technologies and their applications to real estate operations and practice.